BOOK REVIEW EXTRACT:

"While few would openly deny the importance of the First Amendment as a safeguard against government tyranny, it is often argued that its protections must be curtailed in order to achieve some "compelling" government interest. Recently, this claim has most often been made in defense of various anti-discrimination laws; it is held that eradicating discrimination is sufficiently important to warrant the erosion of the freedoms these laws entail. David Bernstein, a libertarian law professor at George Mason, argues that this way of thinking is dangerous and misguided. His book You Can't Say That! is a scholarly but accessible defense of civil liberties.

Bernstein has no shortage of examples to prove that anti-discrimination laws have unduly limited freedom of expression:

Religious schools barred from firing teachers who defied the dictates of the religion

Neighborhood activists who were prosecuted for discriminating against the mentally ill when they tried to organize opposition to a mental hospital being built in their neighborhood

Gyms forced to hire unfit instructors

In particularly Orwellian cases, even mere opposition to anti-discrimination laws is cited as evidence of discrimination......

Gay rights activists in Canada may have rejoiced when a man was punished for taking out a newspaper advertisement citing Biblical passages opposing homosexuality, but they surely aren't pleased with the police raids which target gay bookstores in their search for obscene materials. Similarly, the Australian journalist who was investigated for "racial vilification" after writing an anti-American column would at least have been allowed to express his thoughts in the U.S. The logic of anti-discrimination laws has no discernible limit; in New Zealand, a commission has concluded that refusing credit to an unemployed man is discrimination based on financial status.

More here.